


After the Sigfried Incident

by Ghelik



Series: Loki & Friends [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Norse Religion & Lore, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Asgard, Character Study, Children, F/M, Family, Genderfluid, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Loki's Kids, Loss, Odin's A+ Parenting, Original Character Death(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-05-30 03:26:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6406756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghelik/pseuds/Ghelik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki was back, Odin made sure of that. Now everything will be as it once was, as it should be, and, if it takes time... Well... Gods have time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Sigfried Incident

Sometimes it was like the world was a dark a cold place that threatened to devour him. Others it was just this side of too quiet, the sun too dull, the stars nowhere to be found.

  
He rarely slept, but when he did it was for weeks at a time. He never spoke or ate. Usually, he sat by the window, watching through glassy eyes the comings and goings of visitors.

  
When someone bothered to notice his absence, his family and friends said Loki was ill. 

  
He didn't notice, and if he did, he didn't care. There was a terrible black void inside his chest and in his lower belly. Like a deep well threatening to swallow him whole. Maybe it already had?

  
Someone insisted Loki go outside, to the beautiful gardens. The sun would do him good. The prince was dragged around like a doll: seated on stone benches and picknick tables; beneath massive trees, their branches heavy with green leaves and peaches.

  
He never cried, not even when he heard the children laugh and shout in the distance. The worst was that baby crying incessantly. He didn’t know why it wouldn’t stop, but the weeping babe was driving him crazy.

  
And then there was red. Red everywhere. And that cursed infant. Why would nobody shut it up?

  
Loki stopped asking about the baby when the people around him started giving him strange looks. He guessed it was something else only he could feel, like the singing of magic in the air. 

 

Where had that beautiful song gone?

  
He vaguely remembered the world had been full of wonders _before_.

  
Loki was alone the first time the world felt real again. He was sitting in the gardens and could hear someone scolding children. The first thing he felt was the bile rising in the back of his throat.

  
The second time the prince was sitting with his family at the dinner table. His father was talking. His mother looked pale, had dark shadows beneath her eyes. Had she been ill? His brother was there, to his father’s right, nodding dutifully at whatever nonsense the old man was saying. 

 

For the first time in his life, Loki ever hated the man. He didn’t know exactly why, but he hated him with a passion; wanted his blood on his hands and the floor; wanted to tear his heart out with his teeth. 

 

The magician didn’t notice that he was out of his seat, knives at his fingertips until he was on his back, his brother holding him still. Someone was screaming. And someone else sobbed quietly.

The baby was still wailing. Why wouldn’t it stop?

  
He was sitting on the bathtub's edge in his quarters the third time. The large mirror on the wall reflecting somebody tall, thin, with long bright orange hair falling about his shoulders in waves. 

“ _Fire-minx_ ," the voice in his head was kind and loving, and Loki half turned to it before remembering that _he_ wasn’t there. Not anymore. The prince looked down at his hands. They had been different, smaller, calloused from working.

 

He looked at his reflection: he was taller, thinner, gone were his breasts and…

 

The void in his lower belly threatened to eat him alive. He tried to shift, to turn from _him_ into  _her._

 It had been easy, once. Loki distinctly remembered it being so easy. But now… now the very thought made him nauseous. He put his hands to his head. She was dead, too. He took a knife to his head and cut away every last strand of long hair. She was dead; she had a right to rest with… with…

  
The baby cried still, and the prince wondered if it would ever stop.

It didn't. 

 

Time passed.

 

His hair grew again: black and thick. The void and the baby were constant companions now; sitting on his shoulders, but he could function. Loki felt alone, the hate still burning in his lower belly every time he saw his father.

  
He knew there ought to be someone he could talk to. There were names just on the edge of his consciousness, but they weren’t there and, with time he started to assume they didn’t exist either.

 

The prince clawed his way back to the light. He shape-shifted less. There didn’t seem to be a point anymore.

  
“Someday,” his mother said one day while sitting in the weaving room. Loki loved the weaving room because it was the one place he could always be sure, his father would never set foot in “you will find a good girl, and you will fall in love and have many children.”

  
“Will he kill them, too?”

  
Frigga stayed very still, looking at him with horror written all over her beautiful face. “No, my son. Nobody will touch your family.”

  
Loki nodded.

 

A part of him understood why it had to be done. It had been shameful; it had been wrong and monstrous and argr. He shouldn’t have played with magic like that. He had stepped over a line that couldn't be crossed. Another, bigger – secret – part of him didn’t understand why it had felt so right when it was so wrong; why he mourned so deeply something that was such a big deviation.

  
The prince started to take women to his bed once again. He made sure none of them ever got pregnant with his child. At some point, it didn’t feel like he was betraying _their_ memory anymore. Loki argued it was different. It wasn’t as if he was taking men. The problem was turning himself into a woman and seeking men. _That_ was wrong. But finding pleasure with the ladies was good.  He was an Asgardian prince, that was what he was supposed to do. 

 

Thor stopped tiptoeing around him. He made jokes and dragged his brother about with his – their? - friends.

  
At some point, Loki discovered that what had happened was a secret. Nobody knew. Nobody was allowed to know. That felt like a betrayal, too. 

 

Hot anger burned in Loki's chest, but he argued it was to protect Asgard from his shame. He had done something so shameful that, if anybody knew, would debilitate the All-Father's power. 

 

  
Some nights, when he drank a little bit too much, or when the void seemed to yawn wider than usual, or when the child had been more insistent in his crying, he would curl in his bed and cry. 

 

That was shameful too, so he took great care not to let anyone know.

 

 Huddled under silencing spell over silencing spell Loki called _their_ names. Sometimes he would conjure up an image of _him,_ his strong and handsome Sigfried. Loki would imagine himself being held in strong warm arms, a low accented voice mumbling sweet nonsense into his ear, running calloused hands through his hair. 

  
Time passed. Time would heal, they said. And time did heal, leaving something scarred and ugly behind. Loki learned to hide that what was so wrong with him. That curiosity that was forbidden and that sometimes burned deep in his gut. 

 

He learned to smile bright and truthful. The child wept softly in the background, but the magic of the universe was singing again, and Loki learned to believe that it wasn’t horrible. And if mockery and slights burned, he learned to counter those, too.

  
He sneered at those man-children that still held tight to that great weakness…. Sentiment.

**Author's Note:**

> This is unbeta'd
> 
> Thanks for reading and commenting :)


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